Was out last week with my hunting partner. We took a new guy along, one that had never been hunting before in Alaska. Little snow. not good trail conditions, lot of ice. First day out new guy got on some overflow, lost control of his snow machine. Slid down the ice and hit my machine from the rear. Busted the Koplin case into many tiny pieces, that thing shattered like glass. My TCR in .338 went flying, hit a tree and broke one of the turrents off the scope. Darn, I was left with my Handi in 30-06, mounted on my sled being pulled by Norman and his big maching. But unlike the previous time I had two rounds of 180gr Nosler partition in my pocket, along with the 125gr loads I carry for wolves. We shot three wolves the first day, they were checking out a gut pile, where someone else had shot a moose the day before. I shot two, Norman shot one out of a pack of five. Second day we saw a few Moose, but they were spooky and hiding, or running fast. Third day, saw some wolves on top of a ridge, started working our way up there ran into a cow and Norman shot it. Forget the wolves, they left at the gunshot. Next morning I got up early, ate and left an hour before daylite (Not sunup, daylite comes a couple of hours before sunup in the artic.) Anyway got into position on a ridge, overlooking the river valley and the grubstake mining claim. Had seen Wolf tracks going through the mining camp the day before. As daylite came on, suddenly I realised there was Moose everywhere down in the vally. I counted thirtyseven Moose down near the river bed in the short willows. I sat there from 8:30 till 10AM. Watched as several parties came through on snow machines. The Moose would hear the machines coming and would either run into the spruches, or lie down in the willows. Once they laid down they were hidden from view, and the snow machiners would drive right by, not seeing them. After the snowmachiners were gone, the Moose would stand and continue to browse. I picked out a big cow that was close to a trail and started working my way down the slope. It took three hours to work my way down where she was located. I kept running into other Moose on the way, that caused delays. Most were young bulls and I only had a cow permit. Amaising how hard those antlers are to see in low light, it was overcast all day. A couple of times I started to look seriously at shooting an animal on my way down, but they all turned out to be either a bull, small cow, or the location was bad. Finally got near the cow I had chosen from the top of the hill. She had worked herself over to a group of spruces and was browsing along the steep riverbed bank. I crawled under a large spruce tree and using a large limb as a rest took a shot at 120 yards. The 180gr Nosler hit her low in the right shoulder. She took one hopping step forward and then just stood there. Her right leg was hanging usless. She stood there for about thirty seconds, then her rear went over and she fell.
I went down and started dressing her out. Some people riding the trail saw me and came over to see what I was doing. They took word back to the cabin for Norman and our young GI to bring the sleds out. About an hour later, Norman showed up. Norm was able to drive right up to the Moose, and as we cut her up, we put the pices into the sled without having to carry them any where. The bullet had hit the leg bone and broken it, then went through the heart. It also took out the both lungs The hole through the heart was big enough to stick my thumb through. I spent the night at the cabin, got up the next morning went to the kill site. Hoped to find some wolves in the area. Ravens and a fox. The young GI took the fox with my .223 handi.
